


Love, And The Way It Leaves Them

by Smokeycut



Category: Earth 2, Infinity Inc., Justice Society of America
Genre: F/F, Reincarnation, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-27 05:05:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9969653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smokeycut/pseuds/Smokeycut
Summary: A long time ago, Kendra fell for an Amazonian princess. When her newest life begins, will she be able to reconnect with Lyta?





	

Shiera Sanders sat in her wheelchair, and looked out the window at the garden. Her gaze tilted upwards, towards the clouds in the sky. She longed to fly again, to have functional wings, and not these dusty old feathers that hadn't been used in almost five years. The sky called to her, as it did every day. She sighed, too tired to wish for youth again. She learned long ago that age is beyond her control. The assisted living center was her own personal hell, she thought. Her friends enjoyed it to some degree or another, but at least they could still use their abilities in some way or another. Alan's ring kept him young, and Jay could still run, in spite of his old bones. She considered asking Kent to play cards with her. Then she remembered that he had lost his battle with cancer just last week. She scowled, cursing her slipping memory. 

She turned 86 last month, that she remembered. Her friends all came to her room, sang her a happy birthday, and swapped stories they'd all heard a million and a half times before. The time Johnny Thunder accidentally wished for Al Pratt to shrink to the size of a hamster, and forgot how to turn him back until a week later. Wesley Dodds reminded them of their battle with the Greenheads, and how they still owed Alan Scott for saving them. Kent Nelson brought up Per Degaton, which resulted in an hour long debate over which of his time traveling schemes was the worst to fix. It was a good birthday, but it still served as a painful reminder that she wasn't the hero she used to be. 

The sudden touch of a hand on her shoulder alerted her to an unexpected presence in her room. A young woman, with shimmering blonde hair and a gorgeous smile, stood above her, just to the side of her chair. She wore a red t-shirt and jeans, a far cry from the cape and leotard Shiera remembered from their youth. "Hello, your majesty," the old woman welcomed. "I didn't think you were visiting today..."

"I found I had a few hours to spare this afternoon, and I couldn't think of a better way to spend it than with you." Lyta held Shiera's hand, lacing their fingers together. The pale fingers of a 25 year old locked together with dark skinned fingers that had been weathered with age, but the feelings they stirred brought them both right back to 1938. They had shared a lifetime together, but those can only last for so long.

"The doctors said I only have a few weeks left. Said I have ovarian cancer. It was caught late, so there's nothing they could do about it," Shiera explained, before turning to look out the window again. Lyta wheeled her closer, and opened the window, letting the spring breeze caress Shiera's face. "Some days I can't believe I've lived this long. Other days, I can't believe I don't have much more time left."

"What about today?" Lyta inquired, gently running her fingers through Shiera's hair.

"Today? Heh, today I just wish I could go flying one more time!" She laughed bitterly, then sighed. "I always felt so free when I flew. Like nothing could hold me down." The pair sat in silence for a moment, before Lyta spoke up.

"How about we go for a walk? I can talk to your caretaker, I'm sure she wouldn't mind letting you roam free for an hour." 

Her caretaker didn't care much at all, and they soon found themselves in the garden of the assisted living center, but Shiera's eyes kept to the sky. She smiled at the sight of a flock of birds, and when one landed on the stone path nearby, she was delighted. 

"It's a mourning dove. They're wings whistle when they take off," she explained. her eyes crinkled with delight as she turned to look up at Lyta. "It's a way for them to sonate." 

Shiera and Lyta spent the next two hours bird watching, discussing which flowers in the garden looked the nicest, and reminiscing about old adventures that took them around the globe. When Lyta wheeled Shiera back to her room, she didn't know it would be the last time she saw her love, but she still treated it like it would be. She heard the news that Shiera had passed away four days later, and immediately began making preparations for the funeral, and for life after. She knew the day would come eventually, but she still felt the tidal wave of grief. It could have destroyed her, but she didn't let it. She held on with the knowledge that the world would still need it's Amazonian protector, that life would keep going, that Shiera wanted her to see what would happen next.

What happened next was a birth. Or rather, a rebirth. The same day that Sheira died in 1996, a girl named Kendra was born. She had a normal life, with normal parents and normal friends. The day she turned 17, something very abnormal happened to her. Kendra began to have dreams of past lives. At first it was just flashes of a palace in Egypt, but as she grew older, and entered her 20s, she remembered other lives. Swinging a mace at a knight's head in a forest. Punching out fleeing spies in New York. A woman dancing in Oklahoma, her hair shining like spun gold beneath the sun's rays. Her heart beating faster, drumming a rhythm that made her feel like soaring. She didn't understand, but she wanted to. She needed to know who she was. She found herself compelled to stand on the roof of her apartment, step up on the ledge, and take a leap. The cold wind whipped at her dreadlocks and made it hard to keep her eyes open. Her heart pounded in her chest, her palms were sweaty and her knees weak. In the end, she couldn't bring herself to do it, nor could she do it the next night, or the next, or the next. It was on the seventh night that Kendra finally took her leap of faith, falling into the street below, and it was on the seventh night that wings sprouted from her back in a burst of shimmering golden light. Kendra Muñoz Saunders flew for the first time that night, and she felt as though she had done it a million times before. It came to her naturally, her control over her wings perfect in every way. Her nosedive twisted upwards, and with her wings beating hard against the night, she rose. Above her apartment, above all the buildings in New York. She only allowed herself to tread air when she saw the Empire State Building a few dozen feet below.

It was then that Kendra looked to the stars and gasped. She had never felt this close to the sky before, but she knew now that she could never abandon it. It was her playground, and that night, she played in ways she never had before. Flying in loops, spinning in mid flight like a corkscrew, falling and feeling the rush of wind in her ears, only to pull up before she hit the street. When she finally tired herself out, hours later, she fell on her back on a rooftop, blocks away from where she began. She laughed as she caught her breath, as though there was a joke only she and the sky understood. The night time breeze ruffled her new feathers, and it felt like the most normal thing in the world. It was as though she had been missing two limbs her whole life, and only now had recovered what was taken from her. For the first time in her life, Kendra felt whole. Or rather, almost whole. She understood each and every memory, remembered each and every life, but one thing was still missing. Lyta. Her Lyta was out there, still young, still vibrant, still wonderful, but Kendra didn't know where she was. 

The next day, Kendra made a decision. Her life had never had meaning until now, it had no direction or mould to fit into, but now she realized that that was a good thing. Endless possibilities, and with an endless sky as her road, she could explore them all. She crafted a helmet to protect her eyes from the wind and to keep her face hidden, grabbed her favorite jacket, and leapt from her roof once more, this time in the daylight. She would travel the world, learning everything she could about her past lives, her past friends, and she would find _her_. She would find her majesty. Her Lyta.


End file.
